Related bugs

Related FAQ:

I suggest that you install gparted (just sudo apt-get install gparted) and format your partitions by using it (type gksudo gparted and create new ext3-partitions and remove the old ones).

Then you have to add these partitions to your /etc/fstab-file so that Ubuntu can mount these when it starts. Just type gksudo gedit /etc/fstab and add this kind of line to every partition you want to mount:
/dev/hdXY /some/path ext3 defaults 0 0

Replace hdXY with the name of the partition (gparted tells these names).

if i knew what all that meant i could probably have answered my own question (lol), i've installed gparted, i'll poke around and see what happens. thanks for your help but i guess i need the rookie version.

ok leo, i'm definitely in over my head from a computer literacy standpoint but i'll be damned if i'm going to give ms 2 cents for a copy win anything. i'm going to figure this thing out or die tryin'. thanks for your help.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2482.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
dadio@coolbreeze:~$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb
mke2fs 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
/dev/hdb is entire device, not just one partition!
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
/dev/hdb is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!
dadio@coolbreeze:~$